


you're here to be light

by dollyfish



Category: Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, don't come at me, everything is wrong and bad!, i just wanted to try something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyfish/pseuds/dollyfish
Summary: [a study of sitri, if it were a bedtime story.]And your mother was watching you fall with the others, the only child of hers, the soul born of her soul torn away from her like a baby bird who didn’t learn to fly, and you could swear you heard the sound you made when you died.Except you don't die.Your head didn’t split on the tip of a heavenly arrow, but it may as well have.
Relationships: Baalberith/Sytry (Makai Ouji)
Kudos: 8





	you're here to be light

The night you leave Hell, your body aches with relief. 

You inhale the warm, crisp dust, the reek of burning flesh. Must be goat, you think. Goat blood. 

The dunes stand where they always stood, but you trust so little what your senses tell you. For a moment there you thought you heard the wail of battle horns. The flesh you smelled could just be wood, and if your hands weren’t shivering, you could pretend you’re not several centuries late to that appointment. 

You feel a little like today should be a festivity. And you’ll find out your hunch was right, find the sizzling fire, intoxicated limbs, God’s imprints in the sand, yes yes yes humans know how to cry of joy, primitive sort of party. People haven’t left behind their primitive side yet. You know because  _ that’s God _ , among them, yes, it is - you’re not seeing things. 

Your uncle won’t be happy. Happiness for him could be one too many shots of scotch and for some reason, it weighs on your shoulders, because you’re what makes him  _ unhappy _ . But oh, Sitri, you’re an ode to every ache known to man. 

Your calves buried in the sand, you watch them dance till the sun comes up.

.

.

>   
>    
>  You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.  
>  **Matthew 5:14, The Message**

An unusual one, your tale, it doesn’t begin until the world ends. 

It doesn’t begin with you as much as you begin with it.

  
  
  


You’re born into the new world, perhaps your connection to the kingdom being a simple contract of service; this is something nobody bothers to tell you. For a long time. 

The first thing you remember about the new world is a large stream of water, and how easy it is to keep your balance on the stones, really. His Holy kingdom resembles river stones. It looks like a large hand scattered them around. The one in the middle is called Etemenanki. You can’t quite understand why you’re not allowed there.

The second thing you remember comes from the old world. A reliquary. It’s his ink-black hair that draws you in, but the more you keep staring and questioning what exactly about him makes a chill run down your spine, the more he looks out of place - it’s not like he even notices you, a small and quiet thing. At last, just when you’re about to give up, he lifts a pale, unfamiliar gaze… You put two and two together and realize exactly what he’s missing. 

Wing-less creatures scared you even then.

  
  


What do they do in the kingdom of holiness? What happens to the lonely? How does it work?

_ Exile, _ they screamed. It came out like a choir, like a song. 

_ Exile _ , they chose, and the sky split like it heard them, the kingdom broke in the middle and you watched the archipelagus rearrange itself beyond the swirl of different flags; you watched, as if entranced, watched them vomit the contents of their throats and want, then kill, then change like rotten fruits. You were watching them fall one after the other in an endless catacomb for purity - a whole white something evolving into a split white  _ everything -  _ and your mother was watching you fall with the others, the only child of hers, the soul born of  _ her _ soul torn away from her like a baby bird who didn’t learn to fly, and you could swear you heard the sound you made when you died. 

Except you don't die.

Your head didn’t split on the tip of a heavenly arrow, but it may as well have. 

Rotten fruit makes a very similar sound, but you looked all around and you couldn’t see the mess that should have been there. 

Instead, a body was keeping your body close. So maybe your eyes are the problem here. Your mother threw you away and you couldn’t find a single tear in your body - Something’s wrong with your eyes.

As if you care. 

You just want your mother.

  
  
  
  
  


So, the real question is, what do they do in the kingdom of rot? How does it work  _ down here _ ? Is there someone in charge of picking up from where the story left off, break the curse of holiness and write the rest of your lives? It’s the first time you hear words like “freedom” and “take my hand” and “beautiful” like they’re not bile or vitriol spilling from someone’s mouth. 

You take his hand and can’t find out why it’s so right, why his touch feels like a piece inside you finds an empty place. But you’re a child, and you’re too busy to question things about this whole falling business. Like a real child. 

Except, he doesn’t say you’re beautiful like a compliment. That much you understood. 

If your uncle did compliments, he would have squeezed your small shoulder and maybe brushed your hair aside and told you everything was alright, promised you could have a new beginning, start anew. 

He gave you a grim, posthumous look. The fierce arrogance in his jaw spoke of royalty and despite the blood covering him down to his bare feet, he couldn’t have been more confident in the space around him. Each of his movements, even the worked up rise and fall of his chest, sent a shot of fear through you. You’d never felt fear before. And his words, when he called you “beautiful”, weren’t spoken to gain your trust. 

Then it hits you. It hits you, why he looks like he withstood days of of torture, why you don’t. Why his hands are full of shards, and yours are not.

“Sitri.” His voice sounds kind of like gravel. No one has ever pronounced your name like this, because that’s never been your name. 

But he looks so, so tired, so you follow and wait for his name. You want, so badly want, to know his name. 

  
  
  
  


He walked you through a gravefield. It terrified you to see the twarped, muddled, butchered appendages, molten faces, torn limbs, and black horns sticking from the ground like they were the flags sanctified to a cause. This is no cause, it’s only chaos. 

You buried your wings there, in Tartarus. 

  
  
  


You are playing in a field, one where there is no butchered appendage or molten face or black horn in sight; 

“Sitri!” Sitri, Sitri, Sitri. There goes that accent again. You hardly notice anymore, but Solomon has a way of saying it different from your uncle, almost as if he picked it up from scriptures and went there blind. You like Solomon's version more.

The double-named demon shows you a smile that shows no kindness. “Say goodbye to your playmates.”

The little girl who braided your hair all afternoon shrinks away. The other girl actually says goodbye back. 

You’re far away, and don’t look back, when you sprint up a little to match Baalberith’s calm pace. “We’re going to sleep, right? I think… Solomon wants us to sleep.”

“As if that boy really knows what he wants,” Baalberith says, somewhat high-spirited. “No, we’re not going to sleep. The sun just sets sooner, in the fall. We can’t be seen out.”

You look back, and that’s when your uncle finally gives you his full attention. Which means he no longer sounds amused.

“Does playing with mortal creatures entertain you to this extent?”

You keep quiet, fearing that the wrong response might bring affliction to the little girls, or yourself. But joy proves quite difficult to wash away. Your neck warm with a blush, your eyes - your impossibly vital eyes - glazed over, when the field you’re leaving behind catches Baalberith’s gaze, and for a moment, the scorn is replaced by a longing you’re noticing for the first time. Uninvited.

Forget this part. Forget it. Just, forget.

  
  
  


Ladies and gentlemen, the showman of showmen:

Solomon has this brutal and visceral thing, “wisdom”, it’s called. You’re surprised something like that hasn’t chewed you up by the time he turns twenty. It has killed and imprisoned and unmade so many children, men, crowns, no wonder he doesn’t want it…

You... liked his parties. 

It’s fun, all in good fun! Because he’s a showman, at his core, and he has a script for all of you. For Baalberith, too.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Say, water-sweet, pretty thing, here’s a riddle for you. 

You’re a doll with no love, a star with no night, and you live to be looked at while you try your hand at this little show called power, inside this cage of crystal called everything you could ever,  _ ever _ , wish to possess. 

A riddle means there’s a way out and the way out needs a key and the only key here is the one to your busy little room, where you spend half the time boring yourself to "death" and the other half brushing your hair  _ even though _ it already looks perfect.

A grotesque array of cadavers is all you see once you step out, and your uncle looks at them like one would look at a particularly flattering portrait of oneself. The satisfying display has got him in such a virtuous mood that he immediately decides to humor you. 

“The trained forces we acquired from the last epidemic have increased more than expected. Feast your eyes, my dear.” 

The feast makes you want to recede into the internal wing of the castle and never return to the western hall's windows until your uncle’s army has been located anywhere else. Anywhere. Epidemics don’t get any easier to get accustomed to as the centuries chase one another. “I must say I’m glad for you,” you say. They will be sent somewhere to fight goodness and be slaughtered sooner or later, after all.

Baalberith takes one shoulder in his hand and pulls you closer to the balcony window. “Oh, yeah, my mistake. You will command this legion.”

“Oh.” You must have sounded forlorn just now, but you can’t even care. If you could bite your lip any harder you’re sure you’d smear sticky blood all over your chin. This anger spurts from nowhere, and the malicious amusement on your uncle’s face makes your pupils burn. “They seem pretty useless to me. I do well enough with the army I have. But thanks, uncle,” you come back, caramel, so very harmless.

Baalberith’s grip tightens and it hurts just enough to remind you he’s allowed to hurt you, but doesn’t want to. Sometimes, you think he doesn't really want to hurt you. “Now, now. Thirty-one legions. No more. It’s better than thirty.”

“You always say ‘no more,’” you reply. “I always say yes, and there’s always more.” 

  
  


Here’s a non-chronological list of what you know;

first. Hell is a place of non-coexistence. 

There’s rules. 

“A demon can’t be loved." Then again, the only door that leads to love is the terror that keeps you sleeping with your eyes half-open and holding onto Baalberith’s hand with your fucking teeth. You’ve got a part to play, the script’s all there since very long ago, and you don’t know if you’re the one feeling terror or the one crafting it. But love has sharper nails than that. It tries to pry your chest open.

  
  


For a while, you only think about power. It’s better to be feared, after all. Better, safer.

  
  
  


second. This leads us to our second truth. Nothing is ever really forgiven. You’ve seen how they’re reaching for the knife. Blind, in complete darkness, Hell’s warm breath on their nape. 

They’re all looking for someone to cut their guilt out of them like this fat foreign organ that concretized into their stomach one day. 

You wronged Heaven, because you thought you could, and now you’re stuck in this dummy body with a big, stupid  _ wrong _ , is that not how it goes? Of course it is. 

And, of course, they want to remove it. That’s all you came here for. It’s always the same show. You reach for the knife, cut it off yourself, because Lucifer was the man who handed you the knife and refused to put you under it - but who is Lucifer, again? 

What did you do _ wrong _ ? 

Ask your uncle and he’ll tell you there is just no way to do it right. 

  
  
  


third. You belong to Baalberith. 

But in a strange way. You see, you have  _ never _ belonged. You exist to distort the space around you. It distorts into something that will fit you, will entertain you, will take all these people’s pity and turn it into sensual affections.  _ Anything _ you can drink up or mangle like little dolls.

But Baalberith sees right through you. Sees through the distorted space. Because he’s lonely. Because you’re lonely. This story never did end well.

No matter. It’s not like it makes any difference. He knew since he found you in that field full of graves and polluted gods and gave you the name of a man-eater and then you followed the only one you were ever supposed to devour. 

He saw what you truly are; a spoiled deity, your skin chipped porcelain and the itch to tear kings down in your hands. 

What has he done to you? Nothing. He put together what he needed and here goes; you’re porcelain and now also the prince of devilish depths, he asks you to kill and conquer, so you kill and conquer. Easier than letting him put a flower in your hair. 

  
  
  
  


fourth. You’d do  _ anything  _ for him.

  
  
  
  


fifth. ...Not yet. Turn back. Before forgiveness, before the armies, before hunger, there is this: 

you are going to kill a king. 

  
  
  


What Baalberith wants, Baalberith gets. Truth be told, he turns politics over between his fingers better than some knife-thrower. That’s why you’re here, in the middle of a political affair like a tiny acrobatic dancer doing tricks in the palm of his hand. For this particular case, in a garden. 

You’re in a garden, that alabaster sky makes your cool skin kind of glimmer, and you cut her throat before she can think of screaming. Or insulting you. 

Saying you felt something would be a fatter lie than that you want to hear Baalberith’s commentary. The problem with demons’ essence is that, more than death, it resembles fading to nothing. You need to rip off Sitri’s necklace before she  _ no longer is.  _

The Eye of Horus has carved its shape in your fist when you kneel by the dais. The sand in your mouth is another thing entirely. 

Your uncle gets what he wants. 

You loosen your fist. 

  
  
  
  
  


sixth. So, about the knife. Perhaps that’s not true at all. You’re not sure. Perhaps, in this story, Baalberith’s the one who gives you the knife, who drags it down your skin, and it sinks in because that’s what happens when there’s tender skin and there’s a knife _. _ You’re heavy, and glassy, because you’re not the river Lethe and stones  _ sink  _ into you. 

Perhaps that’s literally how it went and you can’t remember because the _ wrong _ , whatever it was, is gone. 

One drop of blood is enough. Let it sink, darling. Let it out. 

That’s how it goes? And,

perhaps this is the story where you’re broken and rotten and right, where you belong, where you lure men in and spit their bones out and - and this is all yours, as far as the eye can see. Darling, honey, don’t you wanna make the rules yourself?

Perhaps, in the story, Baalberith will fear you, just the way you want.

  
  
  
  


You can tell: he hates talking about angels. Nothing made it right. 

This place just does the cut for him; he’s all smooth voice and sharp wit, loves the taste of bloodshed more than he loves the safe side. He’s got hands like iron chains around your wrists, and a thousand words to keep you lying down in ways his hands cannot.

Your uncle shows the scar on his face like some hard-won spoils of war. You wonder if it’s that one knife that did it, if he woke up one day and couldn’t take all his  _ wrongs _ . 

You can’t tell: what’s on his mind half the time, and the other half you wish you weren’t alone.

  
  
  
  
  


Beltaine. Walpurgisnacht to a few. Anyway, for a while, trouble comes in pairs. 

A man wearing a charming skin; “Right, so, the nephew. It’s just my luck that we’d meet so soon.”

Your lips barely touch your glass before skidding away, into a pout. He waits on you for a bit, then bursts right through. 

“Party’s nice, as always. But it only happens once a year, so we better get to know each other now. Sitri?”

The sweet cocontion slides down your throat. It’s almost one with the distinct scent that fills the hall of the feast. This time it takes a second for him to keep up the one-way conversation. 

“A pity. Father only shows you off on grand occasions!”

His companion’s mouth opens when he sneers, a demonic and strong row of teeth peeking from it. 

They’re hardly the first to think Baalberith will ever look their way if they make their words sour enough. And you can see why. Champions of death, clever when requested, power traded for power; unlike kings, sons and daughters and you must coexist together.

I’ll tell you a story, a story about family:

Who’s there? You heard the sound of something snapping, like a bird’s neck, like your heart, like the poison that seeped into your heart and made it cold, your skin sugared - a summer fruit, he says, just like summer fruit from the East... and then you stopped listening. 

There’s sons. There’s daughters. And there’s you, who’s neither. Here’s a fact you’ve folded and kept behind your teeth: 

you don’t want to be either. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


You’ve spoken languages you don’t even know 

and you found one you love. 

It’s far from the only thing Solomon taught you. He taught you a world of things. Solomon doesn’t stop teaching you after he’s dead, which, admittedly, makes him cruel. But it’s still a deathless death. A testament Solomon built to his own hybris, the scrapped design of mortality. And you’ve stared at your own reflection for what seems like hours without making anything of it. 

Who knows why you feel like the fabric of your being will irreversibly crumple into itself like molten glass or burn up, inch after inch, why you’re severed from the waist up, and while your mind is all over the place, your feet just want to stay still, find rest. Who knows why, it’s a childish body, a hightower of self-sabotage and the smile on a gleaming mirror.

Three separate entities, but they converge at times. 

Who knows why? Your uncle doesn’t know. It’s true, you suppose, that you’re all cut up, a collection of epiphanies kept together with glue; your wings were cut off, your tongue was cut off, your memories torn away from you; your mother, cut, your name, cut, your language, cut. Rumor has it that there will be a son of Heaven much like you, and he will bleed on a cross - a tree turned cross - and the people won’t mourn what they cannot touch. Dear boy, salvation bleeds through the earth, not higher up.

Once, you tell your uncle about… That. How much your body hurts. Someone wrote that demons are vessels you can fill up with the  _ wrongs _ of this world, devoid of suffering, devoid of nerve-endings; then why is it that you ache _ ,  _ that you  _ feel _ ? 

This is the last time you want to see him. You simply flinch when his gaze roams over you. But you’re tired of kneeling. You’re angry, and he notices. It makes no difference to you whether he beats you or puts you in his mouth, but he does nothing of all that. Nothing at all. 

Then, sword above his heart, your hands trembling. Baalberith’s chest pushes against the blade. Except, it’s as silent as a dead bird… No beat, no pain… Not even demons can make sense of demons.

Are you paying the price for something bad you did? Did you eat something bad? Did someone - did  _ he -  _ put it inside you?

Baalberith doesn’t answer.

  
  


  
  
  


You see a smile full of bone. His name is Dantalion, and you don’t find him as full of charisma as others claim him to be. 

There seems to be a force around him that makes others cower from his touch, and he makes his way through the crowd with no effort whatsoever, even looking self-accomplished. Now, you’d avoid him if it were anyone else. If this wasn’t the same Nephilim you met such a long time ago, whom your guts hated more than anyone else.

  
“You woke up.” You decide to be the one holding the reins of smalltalk. Small graces. 

Standing before you is a monument, whole, stone-cold, and vibrating like a swarm of beasts from lower Tartarus; so much power that you can feel it in your pulse. Dantalion laughs, but there’s the distinct sound of grinded ice in it. Everyone comes back from Limbo a little changed. Very few are the exceptions. “I take it that I’m not so welcome?” That disappointed tone doesn’t match his looks. “We’ve all got our scores to settle, no? As in, generally speaking. You get me.”

You don’t get him. You’re just trying to remember if his eyes have always been thick ponds of blood. “Look at this place.”

Dantalion makes so as to touch you, but your eyes remind him you’re still way too many steps above him. Still, no one will ever shut that mouth. “Fair enough. Sitri, there’s a reason if this,” he gestures at the round hall. The lords of war don’t assemble for nothing. “- If it’s happening. We don’t have much time.”

“No, in fact, we don’t.”

“Go easy on me.” Dantalion doesn’t bother you for too long. He almost looks like the boy with the awkward, virgin human limbs, and the markings of a traitor, the one Solomon loved back so deep, so  _ wrong _ , it almost costed him a kingdom. Ha! An entire kingdom, his own life, just to show Dantalion mercy. You feel that smell of festering flesh, the sort of live wound with a breath and a beat. 

You just whisper, and yet the hall’s silent as if it was a shout. 

“Mercy died with  _ him _ , you filthy Nephilim.”

  
  
  
  
  


As the leader of the Nephilim faction falls from the sky, you’re watching. An archipelago of figures moving like a wasp’s nest, turning clockwise. Heaven blinks one eye open, and you’ve heard of oceans turning into desert under some God’s merciful will - now that’s backwards.

Each way you turn, black blood seeps into the land, pools and lakes of blood, streams and rivers of blood, like a picturesque vernissage of the End. What you’d describe as “pure death” isn’t even unfamiliar. It scares you. Even so. Even so, you free your sword from a white-clad body, 

and Baalberith takes it from your hands. He does so as gently as he can. 

This is the day Astaroth dies. 

This is the day the world shakes under Dantalion’s anger.

This is the day you’d do anything for Baalberith. 

You cry until your cheeks are soaked, soft under your uncle’s thumbs. You didn’t think it would be today.

  
  
  
  
  
  


I’ll tell you a story, so sit down. Listen. 

If you’re ready raise your hand. No, not the one with gore and black ink all over it, the one you bring to your mouth when you need to cough up blood and litanies and prayers

that never worked. Let’s face it, you’re no better than the heap of pleasant bones at the feet of the bed, giving him an anxious stare. He’s sitting on the bed sometimes, like that, one shoe on his knee and your hand on the other knee, softly resting over layers of clothing. 

You crawl closer. Why? Because he wants you to. 

Shuffling fabric bares your feet when you prop yourself up. Your hand goes to brush over the thick stitches, the markings under his eyes, _ horror vacui  _ where you should find flesh. So, then, the stitches over his nose. Baalberith doesn’t mind.

He’s kissing you with power and intent all the while touching your hand like a faithful lover. It’s a hard way down from his lips to his hand, and you haven’t learned to walk that distance on those feet yet. Maybe you’ve unlearned it. 

Maybe his mouth, the curve of his jaw, his neck, the texture of his dark hair, on the back of his neck are somewhat important in this story. They’re memorized on the other side of your skin, the one nobody can see, not even you. Why?

He’s kissing you deep, taking you to the ends of the world. And you straddle his legs. Why? Because this is the only way it doesn’t hurt. 

It’s written down, you’re a prince, aren’t you?

Prince sits on his soft throne, in the highest tower, in the middle of the forest. Don’t despair. This is a story, right? You have an obliged, faithful dragon. 

Sometimes, he guards your tower, and sometimes you’re guarding the dragon. You have to, because the dragon told the prince,

he can be so much more than a prince. 

_ I won’t let anything and anyone come between us _ , it almost sounds like he’s pledging loyalty, and you say  _ yes _ , you always do. He’s pushing you down and your clothes bare your legs inch after inch. 

Come again? Who’s the knight? There’s no knight, doll, the forest is dark and the trees are thick and the dragon is your problem, anyway. 

It doesn’t mean you have to trust the dragon. You just have to kill it. (But… whatever you’re thinking, fire kills quicker.)

  
  
  
  
  


The tales you’re told always involve bloodshed of some kind, don’t they? You want a change, you want pastries, flowers, a blue dress, something where there’s no prince in a hightower and you don’t kill any dragon. You want to see the other side. 

Mortals have such a charming way of breaking. You don’t love them, you can only love yourself. 

So here’s what you do: mortal A loves mortal B, who has no love to give them back, and you might happen to walk past mortal B and blow on their eyes, and that night they’ll share the warmest love of their life, until mortal A throws them out, or mortal B dies lovesick, or your trick wears off, or, or... 

You have no interest in tragedy, but tragedy has an interest in you.

  
  


There’s one exception. His name is William Twining, and he’s the furthest thing from a showman you will ever find. He seems to care about too many people,

and he doesn’t like the spotlight that much. 

  
  
  
  


The reason no one ever called you beautiful, in Heaven, is that beauty is almost always automatically connected to sin. 

An ode to hell’s hidden grace.

It’s what you are, what you impersonate, through and through. In your sparkly shoes, your entrance make a decent noise, over the marble floor. Or maybe it’s the noise a tongue makes when it cracks a joke about your dear uncle’s luck. You’ve heard so much backhanded flattery in your lifetimes that jokes, even one mingled with backhanded flattery, should be well-received. 

One thing you notice as you keep descending the stairs is how their white-less stare lingers where the embroidery of your dress skims the bottom of your spine, the exquisite line it traces almost leaving a cold imprint. 

You notice the same thing, but this time you wear a proper uniform and tiny black shoes, and the boy on the stairs looks a little older than you. You’re going to attend a class about things modern Englishmen find interesting, like hot-air balloons. The boy can’t help gazing at you, his cheeks hot like fire. 

Vanity was the vile fruit they warned you not to bite and you’ve always been a little vain by nature. Nobody can take that away. It’s yours forever and you own it and you  _ do _ bite. 

  
  
  
  


William, William, William - let me think, let me think - William doesn’t quite feel like an immortal. 

Instead, he gathers up your holiness in his hands, because he just doesn’t know what to do with it, and throws it away. With it, goes a bit of the loneliness. 

And frankly, this play has been dragged on for far too long. Did the tickets have a due date? In any case, William isn’t the person you expected him to be. He acts like this is not a scene, he isn’t the core act, and there’s no audience ready to gobble up his every word. It’s hard to put it down. 

It’s hard to feel like you’re controlling this anymore - you’ve lived longer than the entire ancestry who bears his name, but William has an habit to make you feel exactly the age you look, like your skin is simply a little too pretty for your own good. He gets angry at you for smuggling sweets into school, very angry, knowing full well that it won’t mean a thing in five minutes. His authority is undiscussed and genuine. And when you laugh, then you know, this isn’t _ a tower _ , you’re  _ no prince _ here. 

Yet, you saved him today. You’re not the only one in Hell with a score to settle, and souls like Solomon don’t get a luxury like anonymity. They’re out to get him.

William doesn’t quite feel like the immortal, enigmatic man who’s the very reason this will all come crashing down on you. It’s baffling, to say the least, how he keeps rejecting responsibility. William’s strange, indeed, but surely he’s not immortal. He will die one day and before dying he will raise hell and drag you down. 

God knows you shouldn’t have saved him. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Admittedly, your understanding of mortality has always been a little off. 

first. Solomon never achieved immortality - Dantalion was just on the wrong side of that metaphorical battlefield, you suppose. 

second. William doesn’t give a single damn about mortality, about any of it, and you find an innocent kind of honor at the end of the line. Alright, so William will never stop baffling you. 

third. Now you’re pacing around the hall of a castle, and you remember the exact place you were kneeling when you offered your uncle the first bounty - the first king you killed hangs around your neck. You remember that window as the one Baalberith showed you the army from, all sixty legions spread out before you - as soon as you grew too old for dolls. You remember hiding behind the throne so he wouldn’t find you and chain you somewhere dark and wait for you to say it, say  _ “yes, yes.” _

You remember one birthday, when he said,  _ “for you.”  _ The flowers, or the slaughter?

The empty corridors and the locked doors and your screams echoing in a blind box, and his mouth refusing to stop and no one hearing your muffled voice. 

You remember that where you’re standing now, he slapped you. A few feet away, he held you. 

And over there, he fed you because he needed a full belly. And you licked the dish clean. Why?

Well, because you deserve it. You do.

You hear something you don’t recognize. It’s the rotten, broken sound of laughter.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Metatron’s kind hands turn you around. 

The archipelagus floats in the void, beyond see-through linens and veils. He’s walking you to the outside before you even realize you were moving, naming every island accurately and explaining why you’re barefoot. You dreaded your skin would shrivel or burn, but even the stones seem to be soft. 

The more he speaks the more you grow aware of the rift. Like your skin was stitched onto you by someone else. It restricts the things inside, including you, but that that thin, vacuous liminal space always remains. There’s no room for anything there, not even rage. And since there’s no one else, you try to show Metatron at least some indignation.

Metatron’s hands leave your shoulders. “I’m aware this looks new and strange… But I’m sure it’s not unfamiliar. Is it?” Your eyes travel from an island to the other. And, at last, they stop. “Etemenanki,” he smiles encouragingly. 

“I know,” you immediately cut him off.

“Of course,” he says. “The person you wanted to meet is there.”

The tense line of your shoulders speak to your unease better than your eyes do at times like this. Your hands shake, so you close your fists. “She’s always been... there?”

“All along.” When you look at him, to test the waters, he seems so sad your stomach clenches. This time, you let him put one hand on your chest, nevermind that your clothes are elegant according to Hell’s criteria, and filthy, putrid - but maybe that’s your skin. “You’re the only one, Sitri. We need you. You can even make the Old Ones shake in their seats.” 

As you walk, you reach a fountain of white stones, which generates a small stream of water. Your face looks as clean as marble when reflected on the surface, without furrows, bruises, concern or tricks; just you. The version of you Baalberith hated. 

_ That’s not water _ , you realize. 

Metatron picks an apple and makes it bounce in his hand a couple times. “Poor, poor child. Look what your uncle did. After all you’ve been through, you don’t even know mercy when you see it, do you?” He cleans the apple on his sleeve - even though you’re sure there’s no need to. Your uncle, for all his flaws, taught you to watch yourself from an angel’s sword, and he did so splendidly. It was never a sword that hurt you, darling, you’ve got a snake’s skin.

But you waver in front of a silk tongue.

The subsequent bite makes a strange sound, touching on an ancient, aching familiarity.

  
  
  
  


Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel - let me think, let me just  _ think - please, let me... _

  
  
  
  
  


Heaven blinks a single eye open, shaking off the dust. It’s completely different, from up close, even when you’re looking down, you’re just looking up from a different perspective. The light gets everywhere, breaching every veil, filtering through the holes in your puppet body. 

Now, at last, there is God’s Eye inside you. You mustn’t think anymore. You mustn’t be afraid anymore. 

_ Now, you can See.  _

  
  
  
  
  


Now, you understand. There’s a reason if you couldn’t save them. You can only save yourself. 

It took a long wait and the room was so dark, but at last forgiveness came knocking on your door, like Mikael did the moment God unshackled him against the firstborn of Egyptian slave-keepers. Oh joy! You understand many things, now that the Lord’s mercy seeps into your blood - and it is such a heavy thing to carry - and you fill your mouth with mercy in the form of his holy word. You think carrying this would kill someone who can be killed. So martyrs and saints die!

Your beloved Solomon pops up in your head. Then again, you don’t know the shapes of his face. You were not infected. That mortal took a chance against God! Death was just retribution! 

You must kill your last king! You must do it the way Solomon seized power back then - again, it’s just retribution, the way things work! Quick and clean, just like snapping a bone in two; you’ll take this rotten bone from a dying world and let the worms have the rest. That is the Lord’s will! Quick and clean. 

The human is speaking, shaking the shackles that bind him to death, but he does not step back.

You say you will break the cycle but he isn’t begging you to stop. It’s like the menace of Durendal does not even reach him. He’s asking you to remember his face. A wrong, arrogant, ignorant, heretic boy asking you to remember - Remember what, even?

You just want to see his face dragged through blood, to let Durendal cut him limb from limb. If William can’t be saved, you’re the one who kills him. Quick and clean.

The boy brings one hand towards you and a part of you is paralyzed, which makes you too slow to get him - What was that name just now? 

... He is Solomon, and he is the last king for you.

  
  
  
  


Except this is a story about love. Not death.

  
  
  


This is the day - 

The hole in Baalberith’s stomach drips like the gutter underneath a slaughterhouse. Durendal’s grip starts shaking, and then you realize that’s just the result of your tremors, when it’s already too late to regret it. At last, as your fingers clutch on it, right now, the two of you stand on opposite ends of the mirror.

They sing - 

You’re acting as if you’re the one in pain, and Baalberith sports an easy smile of his. His smooth grip reaches up, passing your shoulders, your white neck, no longer lingering on your chiseled outlines and the corners he knows so well. A trail of blood is quick to fall from his lips when he draws breath. 

Nothing moves, except your hands -

“You’re mine forever. Heaven can’t have you.”

The archipelagus falling to pieces - 

But the ground’s solid beneath you.

Turns out, you were wrong. You couldn’t save yourself, not even this time. 

This time, there’s no heavenly arrows aimed at your little chest, and no bloody hands at your neck. Your heart, however, blocks your throat, heavy and bruised with all the  _ wrongs _ of the world, and maybe it’s the first time you’re glad for being so dirty. That day, on the river stones, Baalberith couldn’t touch you.

  
  


Baalberith, Baalberith, Baalberith - let me think, let me think -

In this story, the one where he dies by your hand, he tells you that you didn’t need forgiveness to begin with, that you are  _ not _ required to forgive and you must  _ never _ ask for it.

He’s spitting blood, hanging from a wire, flickering like a small candle - and he’s got a knife (metaphorical, that is) sinking in your chest, piercing all that is still light, wet, tender. Instead of spilling out, it all comes back to you. In full. And there’s no room for ancestral guilt and towers of self-sabotage - Being whole hurts quite a bit, dear.

And Heaven’s sword falls with an empty sound.

  
  
  


The rest of the memories comes gradually. Almost like Baalberith wants to make sure you’ll handle it.

You had to live with the knowledge that blood means water to him. 

But to you, water means blood. The tears are welling up in your eyes, telling of a pain the Ecstasy is shutting away, but belongs entirely to you, and you want to reclaim it, you want to  _ feel it _ like you never have. 

God’s Eyes don’t cry, but yours do. Yours do.

This is really no day to forgive,

but you cry when he dies, and perhaps that’s enough for him. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
